Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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RULE, BRITANNIA! RUMMEL 193
ofMrs. Arne. vir. H. g.f.]. In the advertisements
of that performance, and of another in April, Dr.
Arne, entitles ' Rule, Britannia ! '
' a celebrated
ode,' from which it may be inferred that it had
been especially successful at Cliefden, and Dublin.
The year 1745, in which the opera was produced,
is memorable for the Jacobite rising in
the North, and in 1746 Handel produced his
' Occasional Oratorio, ' in which he refers to its
suppression, 'War shall cease, welcome Peace,"
adapting those words to the opening bars of
' Rule, Britannia
! '—in itself a great proof of
the popularity of the air.
War shaU cease, wel • come Peace.
By a singular anachronism, Schoelcher, in
his Life of Handel (p. 299), accuses Arne of
copying these and other bars in the song from
Handel, instead of Handel's quoting them from
Arne. He says also: 'Dr. Ame's-(i ?/'r«ci, which
was an utter failure, appears to have belonged
to 1751.' It was not Arne's 'Alfred' that
failed in 1751, but Mallet's alteration of the
original poem, which he made shortly after the
death of Thomson. Mallet endeavoured to
appropriate the credit of the masque, as he had
before appropriated the ballad of ' William and
Margaret,' and thereby brought himself into
notice.' Mallet's version of ' Alfred ' was produced
in 1751, and, in spite of Garrick's acting,
failed, as it deserved to fail.*
The score of ' Rule, Britannia ! ' was printed
by Arne at the end of The Judgment '
of Paris,'
which had also been produced at Cliefden in
1740. The air was adopted by Jacobites as
well as Hanoverians, but the former parodied, or
changed, the words.
A doubt was raised as to the authorship of the
words of ' Rule, Britannia ! ' by Dr. Dinsdale,
editor of the re-edition of Mallet's Poems in 1 85 1
Dinsdale claims for Mallet the ballad of William
and Margaret,' and ' Rule, Britannia 1 ' As to
the first claim, the most convincing evidence
against Mallet—unknown when Dinsdale wrote
—is now to be found in the Library of the
British Museum. In 1878 I first saw a copy of
the original ballad in an auction room, and,
guided by it, I traced a second copy in the
British Museum, where it is open to all inquirers.
It reproduces the tune, which had been utterly
lost in England, as in Scotland, because it was
not fitted for dancing, but only for recitation.
Until Dinsdale put in a claim for Mallet, ' Rule,
Britannia ! ' had been universally ascribed to
Thomson, from the advertisements of the time
down to the Scotch Songs ' ' of Eitson—a most
careful and trustworthy authority for facts.
I For '
William and Margaret,' vitli and without Mallet's altetationa,
see Appendix to vol. ill. of BfKAwrglu BdUadt, reprinted for
the Ballad Society ; also an article in TSo. 1 of the periodical entitled
The Antiquary.
^ See Chappell's Popular Mugic of the olden Time.
VOL. rv
Mallet left the question in doubt. Thomson
was but recently dead, and consequently many of
his surviving friends knew the facts. According
'
to the present arrangement of the fable,' says
Mallet, ' I was obliged to reject a gi'eat deal of
what I had written in the other ; neither could
I retain of my friend's part more than three or
four single speeches, and a part of one song.'
He does not say that it was the one song of the
whole that had stood out of the piece, and had
become naturalised, lest his ' friend ' should have
too much credit, but ' Rule, Britannia ! ' comes
under this description, because he allowed Loid
Bolingbroke to mutilate the poem, by substituting
three stanzas of his own for the fourth, fifth,
and sixth of the original. Would Mallet have
allowed this mutilation of the poem had it been
his own ? [During Mallet's lifetime, the words
were printed in the second edition of a wellknown
song-book, 'The Charmer,' in Edinburgh,
with the initials of James Thomson,] On the
whole, internal evidence is strongly in favour of
Thomson. See his poems of 'Britannia,' and
' Liberty.' As an antidote to Dinsdale's character
of David Mallet, the reader should compare
that in Chalmers's General Biographical Dictionary,
w. c.
[See an article by J. Cuthbert Hadden in the
Nineteenth Century for Dec. 1896 ; and another
by Churton Collins in the Saturday Meview of
Feb. 20, 1897.]
'Rule, Britannia !' was first published by Henry
Waylett as an appendix (with another song) to
Arne's ' Music in the Judgment of Paris. ' The
copyright privilege is dated Jan. 29, 1740-41.
An extraordinary perversion or religious parody
was sung as a hymn in the Rev. Rowland Hill's
Chapel, and was included in his Surrey Chapel
Hymns at the beginning of the 19th century.
Since the above account was written no fresh
clue has come to light regarding the authorship
of the words. r. k.
Beethoven wrote five variations for the piano
upon the air, and besides numberless references
to it in occasional compositions of all sorts,
mention may be made of Wagner's overture
upon it, which was written aif Konigsberg in
1836, sent to the Philharmonic Society of
London in 1840, and apparently lost for many
years. A set of parts, no doubt made for some
performance which never took place, was acquired
by the late Hon. Mrs. Burrell from a German
dealer in old music ; and another set came to
light in 1904, corresponding exactly with these,
from which the score was reconstructed and the
work played at the Queen's Hall in Jan. 1905.
It is a composition of no intrinsic value, though
historically it is of some interest. M.
RUMMEL. A German musical family. (1)
Christian Fkanz Ludwig Friedkich Alexander
was bom at Brichsenstadt, Bavaria, Nov.
27, 1787. He was educated at Mannheim, and
seems to have had instruction from the Abbd